Chapter 9
SHANNEN
“I played football in college. Remember I told you that? I could’ve gone pro.
I had scouts calling, contracts on the table, and the whole fucking golden-boy dream was laid out in front of me, but I didn’t want it.
I couldn’t stomach the idea of living that life while you were out there thinking I’d forgotten you existed.
None of it mattered if you weren’t there to see me win. ”
“So you just quit?”
“I found something else. Something I was good at, and that gave me purpose in a way football never did.”
“What did you do?”
“Hacking, surveillance, digital forensics. I’ve been building back doors into systems, breaking into places I had no right to be. Emails, GPS tracking, security cameras—you name it, I’ve been inside it.”
“You gave up everything for that?”
“I gave up everything for you… I’ve had eyes on you since the day you walked away, pretty girl, and I don’t regret a single second of it. Sure, it was harder when I was still playing football, but every moment I wasn’t on that field belonged to you.”
I shake my head slowly, nausea rolling through me. “You didn’t do any of this for me. You did it because you needed to feel less like the monster you became.”
“I did it because I love you.”
“No, you don’t,” I bite out. “You don’t even know what that word means.”
His steel-colored eyes hold my gaze. “Don’t say that. You don’t get to tell me what I felt or what I still feel. I love you, Shannen; I always have, and I wouldn’t have done any of this if I didn’t.”
“You mean stalking me? Breaking into my life? Watching me without my consent? If that’s love, Phoenix, then I hope to god I never feel it.”
“You do feel it. You just don’t want to.”
“Are you fucking serious?” I feel like my entire body is coming apart, like my own skin has forgotten how to hold me together and is ready to give up on me entirely. “I don’t love you, and I sure as shit don’t want you. Fuck. Let that sink in and move the hell on already.”
He nods like he’s listening, but nothing in his face says he accepts a single word I’ve said. “Can I ask you something?”
I shrug, too far gone to fake control anymore. I’m unraveling fast, and he knows it.
“If I went downstairs and brought a woman back to this room… could you watch her touch me?”
No.
The answer screams inside me, but I look him dead in the eye and say, “Yes.”
He flinches, and it feeds something dark in me.
“I’d watch her crawl into your lap and kiss your throat while you whispered lies in her ear.
I’d watch you eat her pussy with the same mouth you just told me you loved me with, and I wouldn’t say a fucking word while you gave it all up to her.
I’d keep my mouth shut, and I promise you I wouldn’t feel a damn thing.
” My throat aches, but I keep pushing. “Because I don’t care, Phoenix.
After tonight, I’m done. I’ll never think about you again, and you’ll be nothing to me—less than nothing. ”
He leans forward, elbows on his knees, and his hands are clenched so tightly his knuckles have gone bone white, his veins bulging across his forearms.
“Baby, don’t push me because I’ll fucking do it.
Don’t think for a second I won’t. I’ll grab the first woman who looks at me twice and bring her back here.
You want to test me? I’ll fuck her right in front of you.
I’ll let her fucking own me while I stare straight at you the entire time.
” I can’t speak. I can barely breathe. “I’d hate it.
I’d fucking hate every second of it. It would gut me, pretty girl, because when I picture being touched…
it’s always you. Only you. And the thought of faking it with someone else just to prove a point?
” He meets my eyes, and the agony there is so raw, so devastating, that I almost feel sorry for him.
“It wouldn’t hurt you half as much as it would destroy me. ”
I hate him. I hate myself for what this has become and for the way my chest is caving in at just the idea of it.
I want to scream at him.
I want to kiss him.
I want to burn this whole fucking room to the ground with both of us in it.
“You want to know what I’ve done? I watched it, all of it.” His eyes are wild, burning with a darkness that he isn’t even bothering to hide. “I’ve watched your dress slide off your shoulders, your bra hit the floor, and your lips call out names that weren’t mine.”
What the fuck did he just say?
“I’ve watched you throw your head back and come for men who didn’t even know what the fuck they were holding when they had their hands on you. And I couldn’t stop, baby. I couldn’t look away.”
So he just sat there like some obsessed little coward and jacked off to it? Oh, fuck him. Fuck him.
“Do you think I didn’t want to smash through the screen and tear them apart with my fucking hands?
You think I didn’t fantasize about choking the life out of every man who touched you?
I wanted to kill them all, but I didn’t.
I sat there and clenched my fists until my nails drew blood, and I watched because that’s what I deserved.
” His voice breaks completely. “I failed you, and I loved you enough to keep torturing myself in every twisted way possible so that if this day ever came—if you ever looked at me again—I could tell you that I’ve been dying a little more every day since you walked out of my life. ”
I hate him. I hate him more than I’ve ever hated anyone.
But underneath the hate and the fury, there’s this pulsing, jagged ache because I loved him once.
“You watched me intimately,” I whisper, and even as the words leave my mouth, they taste like betrayal. “How do you think that makes me feel?”
“Like I’ve crossed a line, but I’m not sorry, and I won’t apologize for it.”
“Of course you won’t, because when have you ever taken responsibility for the damage you leave behind?”
He bristles, his eyes narrowing. “What the hell do you think I’m doing now?”
“I don’t even fucking know.” I throw my hands up, rise to my feet, and start pacing. “I’ve gone from blissful ignorance with a mild craving for revenge to uncovering shit I wouldn’t have believed in a nightmare. I mean, how the hell have you stayed hidden?”
“Because I made it so. Now quit with the questions and let me finish. You need to hear this. I need you to know everything because I refuse to come back to you and begin this as a lie.”
He’s already decided we’re inevitable, and he’s just giving me time to realize it. Like baring every ugly truth is the only way forward, convinced that no matter how badly we break, we’ll always find our way back to each other.
He has no idea how wrong he is.
“If we’re going to do this—if there’s any chance for us—you deserve to know exactly who you’d be letting back in.”
The dread in my stomach turns molten, spreading through my veins, and when I open my mouth to argue, to push back, he shuts me down with nothing more than a look.
“I’ve watched you at home. Sometimes you were alone, sometimes you weren’t.
” He pauses, eyes never leaving mine. “The ones who meant nothing to you, I let go. They didn’t even know what to do with you; they couldn’t get you off if their lives depended on it.
But the ones you started to see more often and thought might become something real?
I wasn’t so lenient. I did my research. I dug through everything—background checks, bank accounts, criminal records, browser histories, social media, and personal messages.
If I found even one reason not to trust them, one skeleton in their closet, I made sure they disappeared. ”
“What does that mean?”
“It means you haven’t heard from Boring Brian because that piece of shit has been fucking his stepmother behind his father’s back for three years, got her pregnant twice, and was still coming to you with those same disgusting hands.” His voice turns lethal. “I couldn’t allow that to continue.”
Horror crawls up my throat. “Phoenix… what did you do? ”
“I warned him nicely, if you count a few broken fingers as polite. I also knew those fingers had been inside you, and that made me… irrational. I told him if he ever so much as breathed near you again, I’d tell his daddy everything, and then I’d cut off his balls and shove them so far down his throat he’d be gagging on his own cum for a week. ”
“What the hell is wrong with you?”
He shrugs, like I’m the one being unreasonable. “Don’t look at me like that. You would’ve done the same if it were me.”
“No, I wouldn’t.” He stands and steps forward, closing the distance between us as his eyes burn with something too twisted to be love.
“Lie to yourself all you want, baby, but your darkness matches mine. I’ve seen it…
You remember that day, don’t you? When my dad left his gun out, and you saw me falling apart?
You picked it up, looked me dead in the eye, and asked if you should just end it all for me.
” My breath catches because I do remember.
I remember the weight of cold metal in my shaking hand, and the way rage had consumed my every thought.
“And before you tell me you wouldn’t have pulled that trigger, I saw the hate burning in your eyes.
The absolute certainty that you would’ve done it if I’d asked.
You would’ve destroyed him for what he did to me.
” His fingers ghost along my jaw. “You burn just as dark as I do, baby. You just bury it deeper, pretending it doesn’t exist. But it’s there in the way you’d kill for the people you love.
” His thumb traces my bottom lip, and I hate that I don’t pull away from him.
“And I know you’d still do it for me because no matter how much you think you hate me, I still live inside your fucking soul. ”
That familiar rage flares up inside me like wildfire, but it’s not just rage.
It’s hurt.